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Geochemical Evidence for Groundwater-Charging of Slope Sediments: The Nice Airport 1979 Landslide and Tsunami Revisited

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Submarine Mass Movements and Their Consequences

Part of the book series: Advances in Natural and Technological Hazards Research ((NTHR,volume 28))

Abstract

In October 1979, a period of heavy rainfall along the French Riviera was followed by the collapse of the Ligurian continental slope adjacent to the airport of Nice, France. A body of slope sediments, which was shortly beforehand affected by construction work south of the airport, was mobilized and traveled hundreds of kilometers downslope into the Var submarine canyon and, eventually, into the deep Ligurian basin. As a direct consequence, the construction was destroyed, seafloor cables were torn, and a small tsunami hit Antibes shortly after the failure. Hypotheses regarding the trigger mechanism include (i) vertical loading by construction of an embankment south of the airport, (ii) failure of a layer of sensitive clay within the slope sequence, and (iii) excess pore fluid pressures from charged aquifers in the underground. Over the previous decades, both the sensitive clay layers and the permeable sand and gravel layers were sampled to detect freshened waters. In 2007, the landslide scar and adjacent slopes were revisited for high-resolution seafloor mapping and systematic sampling. Results from half a dozen gravity and push cores in the shallow slope area reveal a limited zone of freshening (i.e. groundwater influence). A 100–250 m wide zone of the margin shows pore water salinities of 5–50% SW concentration and depletion in Cl, SO4, but Cr enrichment, while cores east or west of the landslide scar show regular SW profiles. Most interestingly, the three cores inside the landslide scar hint towards a complex hydrological system with at least two sources for groundwater. The aquifer system also showed strong freshening after a period of several months without significant precipitation. This freshening implies that charged coarse-grained layers represent a permanent threat to the slope's stability, not just after periods of major rainfall such as in October 1979.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the captain and crew of RV L'Atalante and RV Meteor during the cruises, and the respective national funding to realize them. Special thanks go to Kara Bogus, Tim Haarmann and David Fischer for their strong support in geochemical sampling and analyses both onboard the ship as well as in the laboratory. Christoph Vogt is acknowledged for semi-quantitative XRD analyses of sediments. The paper benefited from intensive discussion with Sylvia Stegmann and Nabil Sultan and constructive criticism by reviewers Thom Bogaard and Pierre Henry. Funds for this study were provided by DFG (to MARUM) and the Helmholtz Association (to AWI).

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Correspondence to A. J. Kopf .

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Kopf, A.J., Kasten, S., Blees, J. (2010). Geochemical Evidence for Groundwater-Charging of Slope Sediments: The Nice Airport 1979 Landslide and Tsunami Revisited. In: Mosher, D.C., et al. Submarine Mass Movements and Their Consequences. Advances in Natural and Technological Hazards Research, vol 28. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3071-9_17

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